White House press secretary Tony Snow said Friday he’ll leave before the end of the Bush presidency because he needs to make more money.

“I’m going to stay as long as I can,” he said without elaborating on a departure date.

Snow’s comment caught White House colleagues by surprise, and they said they could not hazard a guess about when he might leave.

The 52-year-old Snow, the father of three children, earns $168,000 as an assistant to the president but made considerably more as a conservative pundit and syndicated talk-show host on Fox News Radio. He was named press secretary on April 26, 2006.

White House press secretaries in recent administrations have found the speechmaking circuit to be lucrative once they’ve stepped down. Snow was eagerly sought by Republican audiences before the elections last year, and in a break with tradition he made a number of fundraising speeches for GOP candidates.

How much more moola does Snow need? Maybe we can all band together and chip in a few bucks apiece to help him along, or we could hold a bake sale. Better yet, how about we demand that Congress pass and the president sign a bill allotting a salary that will be able to support a press secretary and his or her family, because a low, six-digit income for spinning the administration’s lines just isn’t cutting it these days.

Gosh, just how does the rest of America get by on dual-income, five-digit incomes?